It’s that time of the year, a couple of months after Xmas, when we all start planning for the summer holiday months. If you are a warm weather person interested in looking good in a lot less clothing, now is the time to be thinking about being nice and lean in the months to come.

Mr Bean or Mr Lean?
Right, so there are two ways you can do this. The first is to throw yourself into a six-days-a-week, two-sessions-a-day routine, and drop your food intake to a fraction of what you may be eating right now. Now this will definitely cause you to lose weight, but it may not necessarily burn the fat you want. In fact, it will likely end up leaving you looking a little like Rowan Atkinson in 'Mr Bean'. That’s usually because drastic diets and workout plans cause you to burn more muscle than fat, giving you an overall undesirable result.

The second way to do it is to give yourself a nice eight to twelve weeks and gradually 'trick' your body into losing the fat you want to get rid of, whilst holding onto as much muscle as possible. This will leave you looking lean and feeling strong. Of course, you need to look at a realistic level of being lean, because if it’s 'Mr Olympia' lean you are after that’s not really something you are going to be able to maintain.

I’m referring to the kind of lean where you can see your abs, where you have visible cuts in your legs, where your bicep and triceps show a distinct separation, where you have clear forearm vascularity, and where you face looks chiselled and sharp – that’s what I’m talking about here. That’s the kind of lean you can enjoy with the added bonus of not ending up mentally depressed and worn out due to masses of cardio and calorie depravation.

First Get the Training Right...
In short, to lose body fat you must train at the right level of intensity and consume fewer calories than you burn. We’ll come back to the calorie part shortly, but when training for fat loss the aim is to encourage your body to use fat reserves as the fuel needed for the workout. Blatantly obvious I realise, but then why do so many people approach this by jumping on a treadmill and doing a four mile run? That will get your body good at running four miles, but may not burn fat.

One way that does work is through empty stomach cardio. Doing cardio on an empty stomach in the morning can be very efficient for burning fat. This is because you will start to burn into fat reserves more quickly as there is no food for the body to use as fuel. Incorporate this kind of training into your leaning up plan, but don’t overdo it as this kind of training repeated too often in a week is an easy way to lose muscle fast.

With regard to intensity, getting your heart rate working at 60% of it’s maximum rate will keep you in the fat burning 'zone'. This is an optimum level for your body to use oxygen in the right way to burn body fat in a consistent manner. You’ll find this only feels like a moderate difficulty level for training, but it works very well over a reasonable period of time. Forty minutes is what’s usually needed for this to have a decent effect over a period of a few weeks. I have also found using 20 minute interval training methods is equally as valuable, and works out to be more efficient than the above cardio method. The idea here is you go between 100% maximal effort and 50% maximal effort over a period of 20 minutes. So using the cross trainer as an example:

30 seconds on level 8 at 65 RPM
30 seconds on level 12 at 85 RPM

You repeat this each minute, not deviating from the higher speed even towards the end. Of course, you will be judging the difficulty based on your relative perception of what’s hard. In a nutshell, you should be completely shagged by the end of the full twenty minutes. That’s how you know if you’ve done it right.

I suggest you start out at ten minutes, and increase by a minute each session. You can do an additional 15-20 minutes at a flat moderate intensity for the first few weeks, but as you get closer to the full twenty minutes of interval training this will not be necessary. The overall feeling at the maximal effort should be that you feel you are at your limit. The lower effort is not a rest period, but should be a moderate work level. I recommend you use a bike or a cross trainer for this as it will prevent impact injuries. You’ll find interval training is a very effective fat burner, is time efficient, and doesn’t cut into muscle.

Of course, cardio is only one part of your training. You must continue to lift weights, as the more muscle you have the more fat you burn in a rested state. And no, lots of reps will not necessarily help you burn fat. A mixture of low rep/high weight exercises as well as higher rep endurance exercises is required in order to keep your strength there and at the same time give you sufficient hypertrophy for growth.

...And Then Make Sure You Stuff Your Face Correctly
The training part, although it will be hard work, is actually the easiest part. It’s what you do when you step out of the gym that will largely influence your results. You really need to focus on getting this bit right because if you don’t, it’s a great way to screw up your results and go round in circles.

A common method of calculating the right amount of calories to eat in order to drop fat is to convert your bodyweight to pounds, then multiply by twelve. Take that caloric figure, divide into six meals and, using a ratio of 50:30:20 of protein:carbohydrate:fat, you can then work out how much to eat per meal.

A method that also works well for me in getting lean is to taper the carbohydrates of my meals so that I eat most of them during the day, and decrease them with each successive meal. By around 7pm I have then have cut my carbs out completely and will stick purely to protein for the evening.

It goes without saying that you should aim for low G.I carbs during the day, and monitor your portion intake – eat just enough to last you for 2-3 hrs. I actually find it helpful to eat some junk food once a week to keep cravings at bay. This will help mentally more than anything else, as a constantly restrictive diet would make anyone want to Hulk-smash everything in sight.

In Summary:

• Use interval cardio as an efficient to burn fat and spare muscle as well as longer more moderate level cardio sessions.
• DO NOT neglect strength training when it comes to weights. Doing hundreds of reps is not the key to getting leaner.
• Keep your diet consistent. You still need to eat six times a day. It’s just macronutrient composition and amounts you should change.
• Make sure you still have a 'day off' where you eat something you most crave. Just don’t be tempted to binge and ruin your efforts.
• If weight comes off fast it can go back on just as fast. A gradual approach is far better than trying to do everything in three or four weeks.

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